


Interlude

by inoubliable



Series: Skin&Earth [10]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Boys Kissing, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, M/M, No Angst, Underage Drinking, mentions of polyamory, that comes later, this fic kind of sums up the series so far
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 19:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12942159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inoubliable/pseuds/inoubliable
Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak is eighteen years old. He gets a little drunk with his friends.--Ben and Stan have abandoned their conversation, watching Beverly instead, who is trying to tell them something but cannot stop giggling, her hands laced over her mouth. Bill is sitting up now, leaning down over Stan’s shoulder, listening attentively to Beverly’s pretty laughter. Mike and Ben share a secret, fond smile. They all look so happy, and vibrant, and tipsy, a collective red flush across their noses, except for Mike, who is still on his first beer and beams not from intoxication but from pure joy.





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> "So this was all I had to do.  
> Fall in, fall into the web with you.  
> Thank you, for what you showed me how to do.  
> Thank you, 'cause now I'm not alone again.  
> Now I'm not alone."  
> -[Interlude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDEK9umMpN0), Lights

Eddie Kaspbrak is eighteen years old.

He thinks he’s drunk. He knows his friends are. There’s a certain sort of laughter that accompanies intoxication, loud and unabashed, and that’s exactly how Beverly sounds from where she’s leaning her shoulder heavily into Mike, who has an arm looped casually around her. Mike is talking, a low melodic murmur, unintelligible from across the room, and his fingers are combing through Bill’s hair where Bill is resting in his lap. Bill has his eyes closed and his arm hanging loosely off the couch, beer bottle clutched between long fingers. Stan and Ben moved the coffee table to some unoccupied corner and have taken up the empty space, talking together emphatically. Stan is smiling, not at all tight-lipped about it, and Ben is gesturing with his hands; his drink nearly sloshes onto the carpet until Richie comes out of the kitchen and takes it from him on his way past. He looks loose and happy, but mostly sober. Richie has a way of never seeming intoxicated until he’s fully blacked out.

“You’re doing it again,” Richie says, standing in front of the recliner Eddie has claimed for himself, sprawled across it like it’s a throne. He’s so tall, and Eddie peers up and up at him, at his pink cheeks and pinker lips. _God_. Eddie’s mouth goes suddenly dry, even though he’s been drinking all night.

He nearly forgets to answer, except Richie is looking at him expectantly. “Doing what?”

Richie’s mouth quirks. “Smiling. Staring. Looking like a proud mom.”

Eddie makes a protesting noise, putting his drink on the floor and getting his knees underneath himself, pushing up onto them. Even kneeling, he barely reaches Richie’s shoulder. “I’m not the mom,” he says, with the sort of seriousness that comes from trying to convince others of your own sobriety. “Bill is so much more of a mom than I am.”

Both of them look at Bill, who has his eyes open now, staring up at Mike. He’s fussing with the collar of Mike’s shirt, smoothing it down even though he’s part of the reason Mike’s shirt is so crumpled. “You have a point,” Richie admits, and oh, Eddie loves being right. He rewards Richie with a kiss, his hand fisting loosely in the soft fabric of Richie’s tee-shirt to drag him down into it. He misses the first time, pushing messily into the corner of Richie’s mouth, but they manage to slot together perfectly on the second try.

Richie’s tongue is in his mouth when someone shouts, “Hey!” in Eddie’s ear, and Eddie nearly sinks his teeth into the soft muscle, surprised. When he jolts away, there’s a string of spit connecting their lips which is, frankly, _disgusting_ , but Beverly is clearly too drunk to notice because she pushes herself between them and sits in Eddie’s lap. He’s still on his knees, and Beverly isn’t much smaller than he is, so it’s kind of awkward and a little painful, but she gives a happy little sigh and Eddie wouldn’t deny her anything.

Richie looks similarly enchanted, staring down at them both like they are the subject of a particularly interesting art piece. His eyes are soft, and a little wide. He reaches down and pushes the hair out of Beverly’s face, and she sways into the touch as if she can’t help herself. Eddie wonders, in some strange unbidden part of his brain, if Richie has ever kissed her. He thinks Richie probably has. Richie and Beverly are close. They’re all close, but there are some bonds that are admittedly tighter than others. Eddie sees it, in the way that Beverly and Richie talk quietly over a shared cigarette; in the way that Ben and Mike bend their heads together over some ancient tomb of dusty history; in the way that, even now, Bill’s hand hangs off the couch and brushes, perhaps unintentionally, against Stan’s arm.

He wouldn’t mind if they had kissed, he thinks. After all, he kissed Beverly, too.

Beverly twists around and stares at him, and it’s almost like she can see into his head. Eddie wonders if it’s always like this. If Eddie made friends outside of the Losers, would they be able to read his mind, too? He doesn’t think so. He’s sure this is a private thing, meant only for the Lucky Seven.

Beverly’s face is very close to his. Her breath is against his lips. Eddie remembers kissing her, way back in seventh grade. She was his first kiss, ever. She was a loser, then, but she wasn’t a Loser. None of them had been. It had been just Stan and Bill and Richie and Eddie, and he had heard about the fiery-haired girl who smoked behind the gym and would do just about anything for a pack of cigarettes. Those rumors weren’t true, but she had actually kissed him for that crinkled pack of Winstons. He wonders, now, if she had known, then. If she had known that he was gay. If she had known that he would owe the discovery of his own sexuality, in part, to her.

He wonders if she would kiss him again.

When he glances up at Richie, Richie’s eyes are very, very wide.

Beverly looks up, too, and the moment passes. She laughs, loud and delighted. “I think Richie’s about to have a stroke,” she whispers out of the side of her mouth, and Eddie grins, because she’s sort of right. Richie’s looking back and forth between them, back and forth, and his mouth is a little open but he _isn’t saying anything_ , which is honestly sort of weird.

He recovers quickly enough, but Eddie kind of likes that slack-mouthed look.

“What are you guys doing over there?” Stan calls. Bill rolls his head to the side, still on Mike’s lap, cracking open one eye lazily.

“I was thinking about kissing Eddie again,” Beverly says without pause, confirming everything Eddie ever suspected about her ability to read his mind.

Richie sputters. “ _Again_?”

Bill opens both of his eyes. “If we-we’re r-ruh-reenacting Eddie’s ki-kisses, d-does that mean I’m ne-next?” He has mostly conquered his stutter, but drinking does something to him, knocks all of that expensive speech therapy out of his head. Eddie kind of likes it, like this, Bill tripping over his words in a way he hasn’t since he was fourteen. It feels more real.

Eddie laughs. Richie’s eyes are practically bugging out of his head.

“You kissed _Bill_?” he demands, somewhere between scandalized and delighted.

“Technically,” Eddie says, “Bill kissed me.”

Richie makes a noise that’s sort of strangled, looking between Bill and Eddie, like he’s trying to picture it. Bill holds his hands up, like he knows what Richie’s about to say. He probably does.

“I’m not d-d-doing it again. N-No offense, Eddie.”

Eddie shrugs. “None taken.” He doesn’t believe it anyway. Bill would kiss him again, if Eddie wanted him to. Bill would do anything for any of them. All they have to do is ask.

 _Would you kiss me?_ he remembers asking Bill, twelve years old, lying in Bill’s bed and staring at Bill’s face, illuminated by the streetlight and his own blush.

Bill stares at him from Mike’s lap. His mouth is a little open, like it was just after their lips had parted with a tiny wet noise that Eddie can still remember.

Yeah. Bill would kiss him again.

Richie squints around the room. “Anyone else want to admit to macking on my man?”

Stan rolls his eyes. “He wasn’t your man when any of this happened. It isn’t our fault you guys took forever to get your shit together.”

Richie raises an accusatory finger in Stan’s direction. “That sounds like a confession, Stanley.”

Stan lifts his hand, middle three fingers raised, Scout’s honor. “I have not kissed Eddie.” There’s a soft pause tacked onto the end, and Eddie is pretty sure he can hear the _yet_. He does not know if Stan is trying to taunt Richie, or if he means it. The way he winks when Eddie looks at him says nothing. Stan has always been the best at keeping the others out of his head.

Richie does not acknowledge the pause. “Also, what do you even mean, Eddie wasn’t my man? Eddie has been my man since we were ten years old and you know it.”

Eddie opens his mouth to argue, but finds he can’t. He remembers being ten years old and holding onto Richie’s hand the first time they ever leapt off the edge of the quarry cliff together. He remembers being eleven, opening his bedroom window to Richie standing on his lawn, like the protagonist of some John Hughes movie. He remembers being twelve, kissing Bev and Bill only to realize he wanted to be kissing Richie, and then thirteen, the fucking cursed year, the year of It, the year he realized nothing could possibly be scarier than losing his friends, than losing Richie. He remembers being fourteen, admiring Richie through the shimmery haze of morphine. He remembers being fifteen, kissing Richie for the first time, and then sixteen, making out in the back of Richie’s car. He remembers their stupid fight the year before about Richie not joining him at college. He remembers his birthday, a few weeks earlier, when Richie gave him the ring that still sits perfectly around his middle finger like it’s always been there. He hasn’t taken it off. He doesn’t think he ever will.

Richie has a point. Eddie has been his for close to a decade.

Stan returns to his conversation with Ben, and Bill looks away when Mike starts speaking again. Beverly climbs off of Eddie’s lap, drunkenly shoving herself under Ben’s arm, which he already has raised to emphasize whatever point he’s making. Eddie falls against Richie. Richie catches him like he expects it, hauling him up so he can fit underneath, Eddie spread across his lap.

“It’s always been you,” Eddie says into Richie’s ear.

“It always will be,” Richie says back, and he doesn’t sound like he has any doubts.

Eddie likes the way _always_ sounds in Richie’s mouth. Satisfied, he settles, his back against Richie’s chest. He looks around at his friends. Ben and Stan have abandoned their conversation, watching Beverly instead, who is trying to tell them something but cannot stop giggling, her hands laced over her mouth. Bill is sitting up now, leaning down over Stan’s shoulder, listening attentively to Beverly’s pretty laughter. Mike and Ben share a secret, fond smile. They all look so happy, and vibrant, and tipsy, a collective red flush across their noses, except for Mike, who is still on his first beer and beams not from intoxication but from pure joy.

They look beautiful. Eddie is not an artist like Bill, but he suddenly yearns for a piece of paper, or maybe a camera, just to somehow capture this moment, but the desire passes quickly. He knows he will not remember this in the morning, already well on his way to drunkenness, but for the first time in his life, he is not afraid of forgetting. Richie has promised him forever. They all have. He does not need this memory. They can always make more.

**Author's Note:**

> _3..._
> 
> Come cry about this series with me on [tumblr](http://namingtheruins.tumblr.com).


End file.
